Make no mistake: these austerity measures are designed to force Greek taxpayers to bailout banks and other sovereign governments that invested in Greek debt.

Low and behold, in the last few years, sixty percent of Greek debt was bought by other European countries, mostly the French, constituting roughly 3 percent of France’s GDP.

In this form of crony capitalism and corporate welfare, sovereign governments and banks privatize profits and socialize losses from financial speculation (essentially gambling), leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab.

“Growth is contracting as welfare services are gutted and transformed in accordance with the austerity conditions attached to a massive EU-IMF bailout package (the sixth installment of which — worth more than $10.5 billion — has been secured by the cross-partisan transitional government in Athens).

“Financial insecurity is haunting families across the country, even creeping into the lives of the middle class. And many parents say they can no longer care for their kids.”

So considering the current harsh atmosphere in Greece, you can imagine how Greeks must feel when, according to a new book, they learn Nicolas Sarkozy spends £10,000 a day on food and keeps 121 cars under the Elysee Palace.

In the book, Socialist MP Rene Dosiere, in L’argent de l’État (Money from the State), accuses Sarkozy of “ignoring the most elementary principles of the separation between private and public accounts”.

According to Mail Online, Sarkozy’s palace budget exceeds that of the Queen, and just last week he sent a medical team to the Ukraine on board a state-owned private jet to attend to one of his sons, Pierre, and fly him back to Paris to the tune of £22,000.

Other lavish Sarkozy expenditures:

—> “His fleet of cars is double the size of predecessor Jacques Chirac’s and cost, annually, £100,000 to insure and a whopping £275,000 to fuel.”

—> “He uses an Airbus A330 – dubbed Air Sarko One – that drained the public purse of £215million to kit out, is accompanied by a delegation of 300 people on trips abroad and travels more often that previous presidents, claims Dosiere.”

—> “Recent excursions include an 80-mile trip to Saint-Quentin, from Paris, that cost £350,000, a £109,000 sortie to the Lascaux caves with Bruni and a two-and-a-half-hour trip to Ain that Dosiere worked out cost £700 a minute.”